Signature Grooves: From Your Fingertips, A World of Style

When I was in fourth grade, my teacher told us, under no uncertain terms, that this was the year to master our cursive writing. By December of the academic year, which had started in September, we had to have completed the full transition to all cursive all the time. This was for our own good because for the rest of our lives, we would need to write in script. Well, you can file that whole whopper under 'Lies My Teacher Told Me' because not only was it not true, but people now look at me strangely if I do write in script. Thanks for nothing, Mr. Schultz.

Actually, I'm quite grateful that he made us practice so much, because in fact, it makes my handwriting and note–taking much faster, and I actually like writing by hand. But of course, we live in the age of computing now, and "words per minute" is a much more relevant term than for me to brag, "my handwriting looks like that of a grammar school teacher." It does though.

But since we live in such a tech-savvy world, the art of handwriting is a dying one, and what passes for legibility nowadays is kind of a joke. The folks at Intelligent Life magazine agree, as noted by this lovely ode to good penmanship.

Now, typography has replaced penmanship, so you almost never have to witness the awful scratchy scrawl of someone who hasn't held a pen since Y2K, except to hit a reset button. Cameron Adams, web designer and proprietor of The Man in Blue, asked some prominent typographers to show us their handwriting, along with some of the type they've designed. Spoiler alert: some people have all the luck.